Angie’s heart plummeted to her stomach. Had she heard right?

“Mama?” Her voice squeaked.

“I’m sorry, Angelina. I shouldn’t have blurted it out like that, but it’s true. Wayne Bay is not your biological father. Jefferson Bay is.”

She swayed, her muscles tensing. Her knees weakened and threatened to collapse under her. Her doting daddy not her daddy? It couldn’t be.

“You’re lying, Mia,” Jefferson said, “and it won’t work.”

“It’s not a lie, you fool. To be honest I’m surprised none of you suspected it at the time. If it’s proof you want, you and Angie go for a DNA test. I guarantee the results will show she’s yours.”

“How? Why?”

“Didn’t you wonder why I suddenly had an interest in your brother when I’d had none previously? Didn’t you wonder when my baby girl was born a month early? No, none of you gave it a second thought. It seemed so obvious to me, but neither you, Wayne, nor your grandfather batted an eye over it.”

The words rang in Angie’s ears. First they made sense, and then they didn’t, and then she was sure this had to be a dream, and then she knew it wasn’t. This was real. Terrible and horrifying and real.

“I think I might be sick,” she said.

Maria rushed to her and helped her to one of the queen beds in the hotel room. “I’m so sorry, Angie. I never meant for you to find out like this. I never meant for you to find out at all.”

“At all?” Angie blinked her eyes. This was her mother, right? The same woman who’d hugged her and kissed her boo boos. The woman who would never keep something this important from her. From her father. “How could you? How could you lie to me all these years?”

“I’m sorry.”

Sorry? Angie didn’t know this woman at all. “Daddy never knew? Never suspected?”

“If he did, I didn’t know it.”

“Mia, I demand an explanation right now.”

Uncle Jefferson. She’d nearly forgotten he was in the room.

“Yes, I owe you both that much.” She sat down on the bed and took Angie’s hand in her own. She rubbed it lightly. “I found out I was pregnant after you were arrested. With all your trouble with the law, I assumed you were guilty.”

“After everything we shared, how could you know me so little? Do you really think I could kill someone?”

“No.” Maria shook her head. “But I knew you’d go to prison for a long time anyway. I figured you’d had a hand in it. After all, it wasn’t the first time you’d been at the scene of a crime. There was no way around it. You had a record. I needed to make sure my baby—our baby—had a chance at the life and the name she deserved. So I seduced Wayne, and a month later, told him the child was his.”

Angie’s head spun. She widened her eyes, as if toothpicks held her lids up, to keep them open.

Jefferson plunked down onto the other bed. “Oh, Mia.”

“I’m not proud of it. But he adored your daughter, Jeff. She was his favorite. She wanted for nothing while he was alive.”

“Oh, Mia, you don’t understand.” His head sank to his hands.

Maria gripped Angie’s hand tighter. “What? What are you not telling me?”

“I only pleaded guilty because I thought you’d betrayed me. I’d been ready to fight. To fight for us. To do anything to get out of the mess I’d gotten myself into and go straight for you. I was going to get a job, make my own way, prove to my grandfather that I wasn’t the fuck up he thought I was. I was ready to prove it to you. For us. Mia…why?”

Angie gulped back bile. Was this really happening? Images of the words swirled around her head in black-and-gray letters.

“You were the love of my life,” Jeff said, his voice wavering. “All this time, I had a child. A child I never knew.”

Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.

Had she said the words out loud? She wasn’t sure.

“Mama?”

“Yes, Angie?”

“Harper and Catie?”

“They’re your father’s. Er…Wayne’s. I never strayed during our marriage. Not once.”

“And I—”

“Jeff is your biological father. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for you to find out this way. Or to find out at all—”

“You planned to keep this child from me forever?” Jeff’s voice had deepened, tinted with more anger, almost rage. “Didn’t you think I had the right to know I had a child?”

“And didn’t you think I had the right to know who my real father was?” Angie demanded. She tried to sit up, but her vision blurred.

Maria’s weight sank down farther into the bed, as though she wanted to melt into it, to melt away and never return. “Angie, you had a real father. A real father who adored you.”

She tried opening her eyes again. Bad idea. “Would he have adored me so much if he’d known the truth?”

“I don’t know. But what does it matter?”

“What does it matter? Are you serious?”

“And what about me, Mia?” Jeff interjected. “What about me?”

“You were serving a life sentence. What would you have done with a child? What would I have done as a single mother?”

“You never loved Daddy,” Angie choked out.

“He never loved me either.”

She shook her head, her cheeks rubbing against the too fluffy hotel pillow. “You shouldn’t have married him. He deserved to be loved.”

Her mother’s hand held her own in what felt like a death grip. “I did it for you, Angie. For you. Can’t anyone see that?”

“Bullshit,” Angie said, trying again to rise. She found her strength and sat up. “You did it for yourself. Your boyfriend was going to prison, and you were stuck pregnant. You trapped an innocent man into a marriage neither of you wanted. I’ll never forgive you for this. Never!”

“Angie, please.”

“The girl’s right, Mia. What you did was wrong on so many levels.”

Maria sighed. “I’m not arguing that point.”

“Christ, Mia. I loved you. I would have done anything for you. For our child.”

“You couldn’t escape a prison sentence.”

“But I would have fought. I could have turned state’s evidence, I could have gotten a better lawyer, I could have…”

“I had to make a decision quickly. A decision that I thought was best for my child. You’ll be happy to know, Jeff, that Angie never wanted for anything. She had everything a little girl could want.”

“Except her real father,” Jeff said.

“You can’t take her inheritance. You can’t do this to your own daughter.”

“She’s not my daughter.” Jeff stalked forward.

Was he going to grab her mother again?

“You took her from me and gave her to my brother. My sainted brother. He had everything. He was the older. He had Grandpa’s love and devotion. He had everything I could never have, except you. I had you. But you took that away and gave yourself to him. You gave my child to him!”

“He wasn’t the one I loved, Jeff. You were.”

“You think that matters now?”

“Yes, it should matter. The fact that she’s yours should matter. Please don’t take her ranch away from her.”

“The ranch is mine. She can have it when I’m dead. Now the two of you get the hell out of my hotel room.” He stormed across the carpet and opened the door.

“Jeff, please.”

“Sorry. It’s all falling on deaf ears.”

“But she’s your flesh and blood!”

“She stopped being mine the moment you gave her to Wayne. Now get out!”

Angie’s brain was in a fuzzy haze as she leaned on her mother and left her uncle’s—her father’s—room.

What had just gone on? She wasn’t her father’s daughter? Her father was her uncle and her uncle was her father? Were her sister and brother her siblings? Or her cousins? Or some twisted hybrid of both?

She didn’t have her father. He was dead. She didn’t have her inheritance. Her uncle—father—was taking it away. She didn’t have a mother anymore. She hated this bitch holding her up. What a liar! She no longer had a fiancé. She’d broken it off with Frank of her own accord. And she didn’t have Rafe. He was married to someone else.

Someone else who wasn’t her.

She had nothing.

Truly nothing.

Heaviness laced her eyelids. Her mother’s brown eyes glared into her own, striking, and then fuzzy, and then striking again. Two Mamas. Then one. Two again. Icy needles pricked at her neck.

The room spun.

A curtain of blackness fell.

---

Angie’s eyes fluttered open. Where am I? Her body lay supine on what she thought was a bed. Where am I?

“She’s coming to.”

Whose voice is that?

Masculine. Deep. Oh, so familiar.

Daddy?

“No, sweetheart. Daddy’s gone, remember?”

Had she said that out loud?

Mama?

“Yes, I’m here.”

“Where am I?”

“Back in Jeff’s hotel room. You fainted after we left. Do you remember?”

Fainted. Daddy. Mama. Uncle Jeff. Her birth father.

Yes, Uncle Jeff was her birth father.

Tears flooded her eyes. Her legs itched. Itched and burned. Move. She needed to move. Had to run. Run far away from these two people. They’d lied to her, cheated her out of her inheritance. They were horrible, ugly people.

Only she couldn’t move. Couldn’t make her body respond to her need to escape.

What’s going on?

“Jeff, maybe we should call 9-1-1.”

“Don’t be silly. She’s fine. She just passed out.” His voice got louder. “When’s the last time you ate, Angelina?”

Ate? Heck, I have no idea. She hadn’t been able to choke down food since Daddy took to the hospital. Then Daddy passed, and Uncle Jeff—Daddy Jeff—showed up and took her inheritance. Scrambled eggs appeared in her brain. Yes, Rafe had fed her a bite of eggs. Then he’d dropped the bomb about being married, she got engaged to Frank, and now she found out her daddy wasn’t her daddy after all. Had she truly only eaten scrambled eggs since…since…

“Can you answer, Angie?” her mother asked.

Angie shook her head. “I… I’m not sure.”

“I didn’t see you eat anything at the memorial service, or at the party we gave for the men.” She smoothed Angie’s hair off her forehead. “Jeff, I think we need to feed her.”

“I’ll call room service.”

“This is Bakersville. Small-town hotel. There’s no room service here.”

“Fine, fine.” He sighed. “I’ll go down and find something for her. Wait here.”

The door squeaked lightly as it closed.

“Angie, darling, I’m so sorry,” her mother said.

Doesn’t matter. I hate you. I hate him. I’ll never forgive either of you. Her vocal cords seemed fused. Couldn’t bring the words out. She wanted to say them. Lord, how she longed to say them. She had nothing.

Nothing.

“Angie, I hope you can forgive me.”

Angie turned her head to look away from her mother’s face. She focused on the beige wall of the hotel room.

Icky plain beige.

“All right. I won’t force you to talk,” Maria said. “We’ll wait till Jeff gets back with some food.”

Maria smoothed her hair back again, but Angie jerked her head.

Don’t touch me.

She closed her eyes. The soft breath of her mother’s sigh met her ears.

“I’m so sorry, Angie. This will work out. I promise.”

I promise.

Right.

The door squeaked open. “I’m back.”

Jeff’s voice.

So like her father’s…

It was her father’s…

“I got her a turkey sandwich and some water. Something easy for her stomach.”

“Good thinking.” Her mother’s voice. “Can you sit up. Angie?”

Go away.

“Come on, sit up.” Her mother urged her forward, and she leaned back upon several pillows. “You have to eat something, sweetheart. Please.”

Her mother unwrapped the sandwich and tore off a piece. “Here.”

Angie turned her head away.

“Come on now.”

Her stomach betrayed her and growled. Yes, she was hungry. Her tummy felt gaunt and empty, as though she hadn’t eat well in days. Which, of course, she hadn’t.

She opened her mouth and took the bite.

“Good girl,” Maria said.

She chewed the meat and bread into a tasteless lump and forced it down her throat. And found, to her surprise, that she wanted more. She took the rest of the sandwich from her mother’s hand.

“Thank God,” Maria said.

“She’ll be fine, Mia. She’s just hungry.”

“For God’s sake, Jeff, she’s more than hungry. Her father just died. Then you showed up and took her inheritance. What do you expect?”

Jeff said nothing. Or if he did, Angie didn’t hear it. She was busy munching on the sandwich.

“Water,” she said.

Maria opened the bottle of water and handed it to her. “I know this is all very upsetting, sweetheart. I’m sorry I blurted it out like that.” She stood and pulled on her brown hair. “I just didn’t know what else to do.”

Angie drank the water and said nothing.

“Jeff, please.”

“I’m not discussing this anymore, Maria. The child is fine. She’s just hungry and probably a little depressed with all that’s gone on.”

“You could help her, you know.”

“No one helped me my entire life.”

Maria sighed and moved toward him. “You’re never going to change, are you? Always a victim. Nothing is ever your fault. You could have led a better life, you know. You didn’t have to be such a rebel.”

“You liked me that way. You found it exciting.”

“I was eighteen years old, for goodness’ sake. Of course I found you exciting. But I grew up, Jeff. The minute I found out I was pregnant I grew up. That baby became the most important thing in my life. Her life was more important than my own, and I made sure I gave her the best I could.”

“That’s the difference between us, I guess,” Jeff said. “You didn’t give me the chance to give her a good life.”

Uncle Jeff walked out the door again.

Angie finished her water.

“Are you better now? Can you stand up? I want to get you home. I want to get you away from that man.”

Angie nodded. She wouldn’t forgive her mother, but right now she needed to leave this room as much as Maria did.

She said the words in her mind that now had two distinct meanings.

Goodbye, Daddy.